I am happy to announce that ISIAO and IsMEO Library and the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale Giuseppe Tucci reopen, the library after 6 years. The library is the prestigious Oriental and African Library of ISIAO, which includes that of IsMEO, hosted by the Central National Library in Rome. It will reopen the ex Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale, which moved from the historical Palazzo Brancaccio to the ex Museo Pigorini, in Rome Eur.
Here the original script posted in my blogs L’esploratore del Duce, entirely dedicated to Tucci, and Orientalia, which deals with Tucci, Asia, Asian Policy, history – and especially Fascism and Mussolini in Asia, and comments on Asian news. You can also read my blog on Asia on the leading national newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.

The renewed historian Franco Cardini talks of L’esploratore del Duce – translated into English as Mussolini’s Explorer, as ”two terrific, monumental volumes by Enrica Garzilli”. It describes L’esploratore del Duce in a very enthusiastic way. This is a videoclip of RAI 3, TV program “Il tempo e la Storia – L’Oriente in Italia: Tucci e Maraini” – of May 4, 2016.

As you might know, the book L’esploratore Del Duce talks about Giuseppe Tucci (1894-1984), one the main explorers, scholars, Tibetologist, Buddhologist and Indologist of last century, and protagonist of the intellectual and political history of Italy and Asia during Fascism and in the first 40 years of the Republic.

The book reconstructs 20 years of Italian policy in the South and East Asia, which has been neglected so far: Tucci was the right-hand man of Mussolini in India, Nepal, and before the Anticomintern Pact, and after World War 2 in Japan, too. He also played a role under Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, after the war.

It also reconstructs the intellectual history and diplomatic relations of Italy and Asia through the relationships Tucci with Benito Mussolini, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Chandra Bose, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, Giovanni Gentile, Pandit Nehru, Hem Raj Sharma of Nepal, and the other main protagonists of the history of Asia and Europe.

On January 29, 2017 Elliot Sperling, a great scholar of Tibet, a strong supporter of the Tibetan cause and a friend of mine, passed away. I was lucky enough to spent some time with him at Harvard – where he taught Tibetan Studies, and I remember him as a wonderful man, humble, honest, and generous. While I was writing L’esploratore del Duce, and then Mussolini’s Explorer, he sent me a couple of books and numberless suggestions and clarifications on Tibet. Elliot Sperling thought that it was impossible to know its civilization without reading Tucci’s work.

It’s a real loss for everybody, not only the academic world, but also all the people devoted to human rights.

Giuseppe Tucci and Mussolini, Gandhi, Tagore, the XIV Dalai Lama, and the gurus, scholars, and politicians who wrote the History of the 20th century.

One could hardly imagine a richer and more exciting life than that of Giuseppe Tucci (1894-1984), a scholar who may rightly be considered one of the fathers of modern Oriental Studies and the central protagonist of Fascist cultural policy in Asia. From his first expeditions from the Himalayas to the Ganges, to his encounters with leaders such as Gandhi, Tagore, the Dalai Lama, Subhas Chandra Bose, to his role as Mussolini’s spokesman in India and Japan—Tucci’s is a human adventure tied inextricably to the history of modern Italy, which he himself helped to forge. An adventure retraced in the pages of this book that reads like an adventure novel.